Queue-driven cut-through medium access in wireless ad hoc networks
D. Raguin, Martin Kubisch, Holger Karl, Adam Wolisz · 2004
In multihop ad hoc networks the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, in its distributed version, dramatically degrades the performance in terms of throughput and delay. This is due to a protocol property, which tries to provide equal probability of channel access to all nodes. But in multihop ad hoc network a more frequent channel access might be necessary at certain nodes that are intermediate hops and forward other nodes' data. This paper proposes a modification to the protocol that leads to a higher throughput and lower delay by combining the ACK for one packet with the channel access procedure for another, queued-to-be-sent packet. Hence, nodes receiving many packets, probably forwarder, have a higher chance of accessing the channel. Additionally, these changes provide a scheme of packet forwarding more robust to different layouts than original IEEE 802.11, where performance can heavily deteriorate in certain configurations.